SMALL FAVORS
Ivins, Molly
SMALL FAVORS Molly Ivins Reality Theater The summer entertainment program from Reality Theater will clearly be boffo. The season had barely gotten under way when we were treated to the...
...Well, aren't you liberals the ones who believe you have a right to violate the laws you think are wrong...
...He was naughty, and look what happened to him: The bears ate him...
...The inability of some of the brethren and sistren to make fairly elementary distinctions is discouraging...
...all are entertained...
...Who but the Victor of Grenada, without so much as the presence of the prudent Colonel Oliver North to restrain him, could have dreamed up a policy so perfectly dotty...
...Ah," said we, "this must mean that Ronald Reagan is back in charge of foreign policy...
...On he went, all about the political implications of the Porsche...
...He wore a wig and looked like Cullen Davis...
...All this and we haven't even gotten to August yet, when all the good multiple-murders take place...
...To violate laws in secret and then attempt to weasel out of the consequences even after being caught is not quite the same thing...
...King all winced simultaneously...
...Molly Ivins, a columnist for the Dallas Times Herald, appears in this space every month...
...Given the trend toward irony so popular this summer in Reality Theater, I fully expect the first American ship blown out of the water by Iran will be hit with one of the TOW missiles sent to the Ayatollah by our Chief Dweeb...
...inquired a political philosopher of my acquaintance...
...For those who relish the bizarre and the absurd, there was the remarkable case of the New York City boy eaten by polar bears at the Prospect Park Zoo...
...Among those flunking the requirements for clear thinking are the members of the Texas State Bar Association, lawyers every one, who invited General Richard Secord to be the featured speaker at their convention this year and paid him $7,500...
...The boy had been told not to go into that cage, hadn't he...
...Fans of High Texas Tacky have always considered the Davis case the most exquisite example of the genre...
...But he didn't do what he was told, did he...
...this version is a civil suit for wrongful death...
...Animal lovers felt the subsequent dispatching of the bears was hard cheese, but all agreed it was a splendidly moral tale...
...The maudlin, low-budget Jim-and-Tammy-Bakker soap opera, replete with tears and repentance, disgusts the high-brow critics but continues to draw a large audience share...
...We needed a draw," said one, further evidence that people can rationalize almost any behavior...
...One night in 1976, during unpleasant divorce proceedings between Davis, a Fort Worth oil millionaire, and his wife Pris-cilla, a mysterious figure dressed in black appeared at their mansion...
...So eat your spinach...
...He shot Priscilla in the chest and shot and killed Priscilla's daughter and Priscilla's boy friend...
...The season had barely gotten under way when we were treated to the sex-drenched drama of The Fall of Gary Hart, an edifying tale for all who rejoice over the undoing of the wicked, not to mention the finest fodder for makers of dirty jokes since the croaking of Nelson Rockefeller...
...I bought it used, you know, but it has become a symbol of profiteering and I didn't do any profiteering and...
...No, no," said the DJ, "what I want to know is, how does it handle...
...The jury, however, was more appalled by testimony that Priscilla was fond of wearing a diamond necklace that spelled out "Rich Bitch" and that she dyed her pubic hair pink and shaved it into a heart shape...
...The first two Davis trials ended in hung juries...
...Fawn Hall's remarkable pronouncement, "Sometimes you have to go above the law," struck some of our fellow citizens as a real stopper...
...He held a party at the mansion to celebrate being born again...
...There were Japanese lanterns strung up throughout the grounds, great piles of shrimp and barbecue, and over the public-address system, the same statement played over and over, "The son of Stinky Davis has found the Son of God...
...I am pleased to report that when Secord hit Texas, he walked into the buzz saw of the fearsome Lone Star media...
...He knew better, didn't he...
...Civil disobedience, as many of you with police records will recall, involves openly defying unjust laws and being prepared to accept the penalty for having done so...
...The Iran-contra hearings continue to provide snacks for thought...
...Quel dweeb that man is...
...Good stuff, now being rehashed in Day-Glo detail in a Dallas courtroom...
...The attorneys responsible for this remarkable invitation claim they did it because someone as controversial as Secord would draw a large audience and they wanted to promote attendance at the convention...
...The shades of Antigone, Thoreau, Gandhi, and Dr...
...Happily for Cullen Davis, he found Jesus right in the middle of his trials...
...Connoisseurs of a Good Murder will be happy to hear that in Texas we are witnessing a remake of a classic, the T. Cullen Davis Case, now in Part III...
...Secord, who has been grilled about the car by the Washington press corps, launched into a well-rehearsed answer: "Oh, that car has been such a bad deal for me...
...While some weep, others snicker...
...Some of us staggered out of total immersion in our state legislatures at the beginning of summer, emerging dazed and blinking to find we were about to go to war with Iran because one of our ships had been attacked by Iraq...
...A local radio station in Corpus Christi got him on for a live interview and after some introductory remarks the disc jockey asked, with the killer instinct that marks the true bloodhound of the press, "How's your Porsche...
Vol. 51 • August 1987 • No. 8
